Art, Museums and Touch: Rethinking Art's Histories

This remarkable study presents a challenging riposte to museology and art history that privileges visual experience. Candlin demonstrates that touch was, and still is, crucially important to museums and art history. At the same time she contests the recent characterisation of touch as an accessible and inclusive way of engaging with museum collections, and argues against prevalent ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplicated mode of learning.

An original and wide-ranging enquiry, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of museum studies, art history, visual culture, disability, and for anyone interested in the cultural construction of the senses.